Ever wonder what happened to Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson’s (“Show Me Love,” “Lilya 4-Ever”) English-language debut, “Mammoth,” which boasted a strong cast of Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal?
We sure did. It made it’s debut at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year in the winter, but was seemingly met with mediocre reviews and indifference.
Essentially the film sounded like it was taking global politics and turning them personal with heart-wrenching living room dilemmas.
A tale of families divided, the story begins in New York, where Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal) prepares to leave wife Ellen (Michelle Williams) and their 8-year old daughter for an extended business trip to Thailand. Busy with work, Ellen becomes increasingly dependent on Gloria, the family’s nanny, who is pining for her two little boys at home in the Philippines. With great attention to the complexities of human relationships and emotion, the stories and tremendous performances of MAMMOTH culminate in a stunning cinematic experience.
Now the film is getting its belated U.S. release on November 20 via IFC as announced as part of their fall schedule (via IndieWire). The film is actually playing the Hamptons International Film Festival this weekend where we hope to check it out early if we can make it up there in time.
Other films of note playing in the fall at the IFC center in New York (and presumably and hopefully on IFC On Demand for the rest of the country) are François Ozon’s (“Swimming Pool,” “8 Women”) latest, “Ricky” which will screen in the latter half of December and Corneliu Porumboiu’s “Police, Adjective” which will hit theaters on December 23 for a small, two-week run (sad to think that an award winner at Cannes basically amounts to two weeks screening time in the U.S. and that’s it).
Here’s the “Mammoth,” trailer for those that are curious. We know despite the lukewarm reviews, we’re still very interested.
